dea museum lecture series operation sweet tooth · dea museum lecture series operation sweet tooth...

DEA MUSEUM LECTURE SERIESOPERATION SWEET TOOTH

MR. SEAN FERNS: Good morning. And welcome, ladies and

gentlemen. My name is Sean Ferns. I’m the Director of the

DEA Museum on behalf of Mary Irene Cooper, the Chief of

Congressional and Public Affairs for DEA who couldn’t be

here this morning. Let us welcome you as we continue our

fall lecture series.

This fall, we’re looking at the history of cooperative drug

law enforcement efforts between the United States and

Canada. And we are delighted to be working with the

Canadian Embassy here in Washington, D.C. to present this

program. In particular in addition to the Canadian

Embassy, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This morning, we’re going to spend some time looking at a

critical and extensive twenty-four month case, worked on

both sides of our northern border. Initiated in 2003, it

shows the success that can be achieved when two countries

work closely together to fight cross border drug smuggling.

Culminating in 2005, DEA’s Operation Sweet Tooth and its

Canadian counterpart Project O’Skillet, were multinational

crackdowns that targeted international Ecstasy and

marijuana trafficking rings, their drug smuggling and money

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laundering. Operations ranged from the back alleys of the

Far East to the neighborhood streets of Canadian and the

United States.

Sweet Tooth and O’Skillet resulted in some pretty

significant accomplishments. The dismantlement of two

major drug transportation rings with ties to sixty-one

separate investigations here in the U.S. It was an

operation coordinated by DEA’s Special Operations Division

or SOD.

Last month, we had a presentation in the series that

focused on Operation Candy Box and the RCMP version Project

Cody. The leaders of the criminal organization targeted in

Operation Sweet Tooth, today’s presentation, refined and

improved on the methods used by those in Operation Candy

Box. The Candy Box operation disrupted an organization

that was responsible for supplying one million tablets of

MDMA on a monthly basis here in the U.S. Compare that to

Operation Sweet Tooth, what we’re talking about this

morning, they were responsible for distributing 1.5 million

tablets of MDMA per month. And, of course, our speakers

will talk to that in more detail now.

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These joint investigations featured the work of the Royal

Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, the Canadian Border

Services and the Vietnam Ministry of Public Security. It

is important to note that Operation Sweet Tooth featured

the first instance of cooperation between DEA and the

Vietnam Ministry of Public Security.

Let me introduce our two guest speakers as we get started

this morning. Representing first the DEA side, retired

Special Agent Thomas Slavinkay, otherwise known as Tom.

Special Agent Slavinkay retired from DEA just about a year

and a half ago in July of 2007 after a 24 year career with

DEA. During his career, he served in New York, Frankfurt,

Germany, Reno, Nevada, Vienna, Austria, Jacksonville,

Florida and DEA headquarters in our Special Operations

Division as the Staff Coordinator for Europe, Africa,

Middle East and Canada.

Special Agent Slavinkay began his law enforcement career

with eight years in the Tallahassee, Florida police

department. He is a graduate of Florida State University.

Go Gators. In his semiretirement, Special Agent Slavinkay

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is employed by MPRI and is assigned to the Army Provost

Marshall General here in the District area. We will be

leaving time for questions, by the way, at the end. So

please hold them until that time.

Let me also introduce representing the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police Constable Sandra Basso. Constable Basso

joined the RCMP in 1992. She began her service in

Newfoundland, Canada’s eastern most province. For the last

decade, she has been an investigator with the drug section

located in Toronto, Ontario where she has worked on several

major drug cases. She is currently the acting corporal in

the RCMP’s Toronto drug section. Please, ladies and

gentlemen, welcome Constable Basso and Special Agent

Slavinkay. [applause]

SPECIAL AGENT SLAVINKAY: Thank you, Sean. Before I begin, I’d

like to thank Sean and his staff, the DEA Museum and

Congressional Affairs for the invitation to come speak to

you today. This is certainly was a labor of love back when

we did this investigation. And it certainly gives an

opportunity to relive those old days.

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Aside from the fact that it also brings back the

opportunity to be with colleagues that you’ve worked with

before in the past and certainly provides me the

opportunity to expand upon some of those situations

where ... and it probably is a good idea maybe to have

vetted these retired guys when they come back and talk to

the DEA. Because we have a tendency sometimes to get off

the reservation and get off message a little bit. But we

recognize somebody in the back there that maybe done us

wrong back in the old days, we can bring to justice maybe.

Anyway, Sean mentioned the fact that Alex Dominguez did a

presentation on Candy Box last month. If you’re fortunate

enough to have seen that presentation, I think it’s one of

the best ones that have come down the pike. Alex Dominguez

can do these things in his sleep. He’s got that kind of a

talent. Of course, when I found out that I was going to be

following Alex, it was a situation where I felt like I’m

following Jerry Seinfeld standup routine. I wasn’t just

going to measure up to him. But Alex did call and give his

regrets that he couldn’t be here and sit in the front row

and make faces and signs and everything else to me.

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But anyway, for those of you that did see the Candy Box

presentation, let me sort of pick up from what happened

from the time that Candy Box came down. Again, that was

the end of March, 2004. At that time, those of us that had

worked on Candy Box, we were feeling pretty good about

ourselves. We were sort of an afterglow at that point. We

were slapping five and swapping spit on a regular basis.

This is, of course, the first two or three months after the

takedown. We weren’t getting the usual ASAC comments of

what have you done for us lately? A GS asking what are you

doing spending so much time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office

and that sort of thing. So we felt at that point that we’d

made a serious impact on the MDMA trafficking and certainly

our Canadian counterparts, we were proud of ourselves. And

I think we had reason to be that way. It was an intense

investigation, a lot of time and effort, a lot of good

people working on the investigation.

But soon after we ... and this was I think within the three

month period after Candy Box came down, it seemed like

things happened all at once. There was a situation where

proffers from defendants, cooperating defendants’

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statements, witness statements, started to filter back to

us at SOD and to several of the other officers that gave

clear indication that there was a lot more out there that

either we missed, didn’t know about, had reinstituted

themselves.

And again, maybe just for clarification purposes, when you

talk about Operation Sweet Tooth, it really was a

combination of Operation Root Canal and exactly what it

was. We need root canal because we’d just gone through

Candy Box. And that’s what we sort of figured was going to

happen. This was, again, a labor of love. But at the same

time, it was fraught with issues and so forth just like any

other investigation.

Roughly about the same time, Operation Frying Pan started.

Frying Pan was run by Staff Coordinator Jay Erickson. And

since we sat right next to each other at SOD and could see

the influx of information coming about that clearly

indicated that there was going to be another operation,

another round of MDMA ethnic Chinese, ethnic Vietnamese

traffickers operating between Canada and the U.S.

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So Operation Sweet Tooth actually came about later on after

these two investigations had pretty much progressed well

into their own selves so to speak. And the reason ... and

this was sort of important to us to combine these

operations under one initiative, the Sweet Tooth

initiative. And Jay and I found out that when we’d attend

our coordination meetings with the officers that were

progressing their investigation, we found that members of

the guys were operation under the Frying Pan operation

initiative, they were saying, well, what are the guys over

in Root Canal doing?

When do they plan on taking their guys off? What links do

we have with them? We naturally assumed there were going

to be links. But we weren’t seeing them necessarily at

that point. In the lower echelons, we saw occasional

overlap. But the upper, we did not. And again, this

concern about what each other was going to do in their

operations. Because there was an express concern that if

Frying Pan went down, guys in Root Canal would say, all

right. We’re going to lose phones.

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Because we constantly fought the phone battle. Guys

dropping phones, the quick availability, ease of use, with

the cellular phones. The fear was that if one operation

went down before the other, targets would disappear. These

guys had a bad habit of going back to Vietnam a lot,

disappearing from ... all of a sudden they were here one

day and gone the next. So there was concern on both parts.

And the Root Canal guys felt the same way about Frying Pan.

So largely took the force there and we essentially put

these two operations together.

When you talk about the areas of operation and the cities

that were involved in this, if you took a map of the cities

that were involved in Candy Box, with the exception of four

or five officers, could virtually overlap it on this thing

and show the same cities. These organizations

reconstituted themselves incredibly fast. And Sandra and I

were talking about it this morning. We actually saw video

or we were told of a video that recorded an undercover

conversation that none of the lower ranking members of a

particular organization was seen rubbing his hands like

this. And this is a twenty-two year old kid. Rubbing his

hands together like this saying it’s too bad those guys got

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nabbed by the cops. This affords an opportunity for me to

rise up in the organization. And in fact he did. This

happened in several different locations.

Again, the targets that were initially identified in this

operation, when we looked at the result of Candy Box, two

outstanding members of this organization were still running

loose. Larry Lee out of Houston and Dijong Mi out of

Oakland. Both having extensive histories of drug

trafficking, particularly Mi. It gave a clear indication

this guy’s one of the top guys on the West Coast. The San

Francisco Office and Oakland, both worked with the

investigation at great length on this individual.

With Larry Lee ... and this is when the requests first

started coming in from the field to SOD. And one of our

responsibilities is to fund wire intercepts and pen

registers. And with the first initial ones coming in on

Larry Lee, we saw it was almost like a chain reaction going

from Houston right across New Orleans, Mobile, Gulf Port,

Panama City, Tallahassee. The connections we saw clearly

indicated that there was an extensive organization running

through that area.

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And we found the first instance of gang activity amongst

these Vietnamese kids. A 211 gang, the royal family.

These were well known organizations within their

communities, but not necessarily known throughout the ...

outside their area.

And one of the things that we differentiated with was

trying to identify and classify these targets. It followed

pretty much other organizations as well. The older members

of the organization usually called the shots. They were

the command and patrol individuals. And the younger kids

and these twenty-two year olds, these twenty somethings

that we ran into, were usually the risk takers, the guys

who were running dope and money in all parts of the country

and so forth. Essentially following pretty much a

structured organization.

Canadian targets obviously identified. But initially, it

didn’t go as smoothly as we thought it was. When request

from the field started and we mentioned, Sean had

mentioned, the fact that sixty-one investigations blossomed

out of this two operations. We started seeing requests for

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medical pen registers. And then for phones. And we saw

the links that started happening, started outside the

United States. And everything was going north.

And I mentioned to Stan earlier today that everyone

remembers the fact that as far as Operation Candy Box was

concerned, that migrated north to south. In other words,

the RCMP’s investigation was well underway when they moved

their operation or moved their request for assistance in a

case in New York which ended up blossoming into Candy Box.

So the fact that no good deed goes unpunished, we did the

reverse to the Canadian counterparts and started channeling

everything back up north. Because that’s where we believed

at that point plan and control structures were located.

Money laundering methods I’ll talk about in a minute. This

is what we ended up within total. On the wire, pen

registrars and the foreign investigation. Now, I may sound

like my wife when my wife goes shopping and she tells me

when she comes home look how much I saved you by buying

this. I saved you all this kind of money. With this SOD

funding here, we were sending money at a rate that raised a

few eyebrows in my organization.

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If you know Derek Maltz, Maltz has a tendency to be

interested in what you’re spending and what you’re doing.

And he dropped by one time and he had a piece of paper.

And he showed it to me. And he said is this true what you

guys are spending on this thing? I looked at it and it was

a little bit off. It was a little under what we had really

spent. But that looks accurate to me, of course.

And he says, well, I don’t know how much longer we’re going

to be able to fund this. Because we’re running to the end

of your money, the end of your situation, and so forth.

Well, I pointed out at that time that the fact that Candy

Box had hit so many different cities throughout the United

States. And, of course, we were well into a number of our

T3s at this point. It was like a cottage industry had

developed in these major cities of kids that had started

little companies. And we guided these people through the

process of being essentially interpreters.

So what I tried to explain at that point is that we’re no

longer paying per diem for these guys. We just cut the per

diem out because there are so many new cottage industry,

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little shops and little concerns that have started these

major cities that supplied the interpreters, drastically

reducing our spending on such things as per diem. But he

didn’t buy that at all.

Some of the statistics, and we certainly we always talked

about the statistics really told the game, told of your

success. We would certainly point these out as smashing

success. And I know you would be hard pressed I guess at

some point to say you could have done better. Of course,

you could have. But these were something I think the rank

and file of the agents themselves, the bosses and

everything else with the seizures and so forth that were to

come later were strikingly good I thought.

Then if you just take note of the last four, the cathonone,

cocaine precursors and ephedrine in comparison to what we

did in Candy Box, those don’t show up. And this gave us

the first indication that we’re dealing ... and I’ll hit on

the individual in a minute. The first indication that we

were dealing with Mexico, that these organizations that had

reconstituted themselves were now dealing directly with

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Mexican traffickers and the idea of precursors, you had

cocaine and synthetic drugs.

So clearly, an indication that this investigation had

expanded the boundaries of what Candy Box started. Either

we didn’t know about it or it didn’t surface. This

individual here, I’ve got to tell you. When we ended up

doing this and we started counting all these

investigations, I think we had eight investigations with

individuals with the last name of Win. It was like Smith

or Williams I think in the Vietnamese community. Tran I

think was second. Phan was third. It gave us the

impression they may have had eleven family names in the

entire Vietnamese population. Surprisingly, very few of

them were actually related.

This individual ... and Sandra will hit on this individual

in her presentation. But this guy ended up really the top

command control individual. I mean, first identified under

the frying pan operation. Keeping track of this individual

was somewhat difficult by the fact that he appeared in one

city. Two days later, he’d show up somewhere else. When

he was arrested, I think the agents recovered nine

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telephones off of him, five of which they knew about. The

other four, they had no idea he had. Which made his

association links and everything else, of course, that much

more difficult.

And Win’s contacts that he had made ... and something that

we discovered when we were putting ... this came up

somewhat afterwards. And I think a few of the guys

actually thought about this before we did. But when we

started debriefing some of these individuals, you can see

that we got ethnic Chinese. We’ve got Laotians,

Cambodians, Thais, the Chinese again, Vietnamese obviously.

But what we found was that these kids a lot of them had

associations going back to their days in the refugee camps

prior to coming to the United States.

When they would come to the states in virtually so many

cases were hard working, fourteen, sixteen hours a day kind

of people, putting in an honest day’s living. And these

kids, these punked outs, would watch a little bit of

American television ... and this actually came back to us.

They envied the lifestyle they saw on TV. They envied the

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lifestyle that some of the kids in their high schools that

they presented.

So the associations that have long developed, whether it

was in refugee camps or when they came to the United States

and they had a tendency to stay in their own communities,

that’s how these relationships were founded. And it wasn’t

long before they became well entrenched. And again, they

stayed under the radar. The fact that they were relatively

non-violent. We only saw a few occasions along the Gulf

Coast between New Orleans and Panama City I think we saw

the gang activity, were there actually indications or any

sign of the fact that they were really into guns, actual

incidents of violence against each other. But they stayed

pretty much within their own organizations, not straying

outside too far.

But for the most part stayed under the radar. Because

there was no notoriety drawn to them, the fact that they

were violent. They armed themselves to the teeth because

they were scared to the death of each other. But we didn’t

see that many instances where they actually took it out on

each other.

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Root Canal targets. Again, starting with Larry Lee.

Moving up on the West Coast. Now, these individuals over

here really represented a level above many of the

organizations that we actually dealt with. They were

structured, long in existence, very, very difficult to

crack. They were eventually taken after the Sweet Tooth

Operation which actually came down in November 17th of 2005.

Investigations continued. But they finally got these guys.

And these guys were good. I mean, they were well schooled.

Minimal use on the phones, multiple use of phones, meeting

in person a lot, going out of the state, out of the

country. In fact, I think one of them was a big circle

boy, a gang that was actually on the West Coast of Canada.

I believe that’s where they ... correct me if I’m wrong.

But anyway, certainly international links.

Interesting story about how MDMA production distribution

initially started. Back in I guess the ‘90s, early 1980s,

when MDMA started becoming ... renewed itself essentially.

Because it wasn’t the first time that MDMA had entered in

the states. It hadn’t been a problem here. But it was

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very easy to see that our main problems was coming from the

Benelux countries. Our main problem is coming from the

Benelux countries, primarily the Netherlands and Belgium

where the countries in both these countries found their way

to the United States, primarily by body carrier, by

courier. You didn’t see a law sale ... an exception

probably here and there. But for the most part, this stuff

was couriered into the United States.

Chemicals from primarily China. There’s some indication

that India was involved in it as well. But primarily China

coming into the Netherlands for production. It stayed

pretty much in those two countries, the Netherlands much

more than Belgium at that time. But after ... and what

Candy Box found was ... and this is the first instance that

it was actually shown, production had changed. We started

seeing large scale shipments of chemicals, precursor

chemicals going into Canada. And production being made in

Canada, finding its way down into the United States.

There was an interesting sidelight. About two months after

Sweet Tooth came down, there was a synthetic drug

conference in Maastricht, Netherlands. And these were

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yearly meetings that they had in Europe, East and West

Europe. They bring their law enforcement people together

and talk about synthetic drug issues and where it stood at

that point. People would get up, give presentations

statistically and so forth and how they’re dealing with the

problem, joint ventures and so forth. And they had several

breakout sections. And I was part of a breakout section

where I was asked if I could give an update on what the

MDMA situation was in the United States. And they were

certainly very prepared to hear that the Netherlands is

still an issue with being a source country for MDMA.

Well, it just happened to be that at that point I could

honestly say during the entire operation of Sweet Tooth,

both in Root Canal and in Frying Pan, we did not see one

instance where a reference was made to the Netherlands or

Belgium, an MDMA production. And you would have thought

that I had told them that the Netherlands had just won the

World Cup or something. I couldn’t buy a drink that night.

These guys were all over me. Tom, great job. Excellent

presentation.

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Essentially, we told them the truth. It was just the

simple fact that production ... and I think me personally

in my career in law enforcement, I had never seen a change

in production location the way it took place at this time.

Everything had stopped coming ... with the exception of

occasional couriers coming through the DR up to South

Florida. Other than that, we saw nothing as far as

implicated the Netherlands or Belgium in MDMA production

transport to the United States. And they felt that that

was significant fact they felt they were off the hook

somewhat in that production.

Financial. I think most of you are aware, the agent

personnel certainly, are aware of the Administrator Tandy’s

policy directive regarding the establishment of a financial

investigation to be paired with and to run parallel to a

criminal drug investigation. This is something that we

harped on, Jay and our, with our domestic officers

constantly. Our biggest fear, Jay and our biggest fear,

knowing that we’re going to end up having to present this

to the administrator at some point in time right before or

right after the takedown.

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We did not want to let happen to us what happened to some

unfortunate staff coordinator at SOD who will remain

nameless. But he’s still doesn’t sit in a chair right

after the complete ass chewing he got from the

administrator. Because he couldn’t answer the question of

explain to me what your financial investigation looks like.

And he had that ten or eleven word phrase I’ll have to get

back with you on that, ma’am. And that went over like a

lead balloon. Many of you probably realize that.

So in an abundance of caution, Jay and I harped on this

issue constantly. Unfortunately, well, not unfortunately,

I mean, it’s just a matter of circumstances that the

progress of the drug part of the investigation went much

faster, of course, than the financial. This slide shows

essentially nail shops, jewelry stores, that sort of thing.

They ended up being fronts for money laundering, places

where these people would meet.

It was interesting to see in a Jacksonville investigation,

for example, some of these nail shops were identified in

these strip malls. If you drive your car around in the

back during certain times of day, particularly in the

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afternoon, 4:00, 4:30-ish, right before the banks ... right

before they close business, you can see these high end

cars, tricked out Mercedes, BMWs, all these kids drive

these things. You setup surveillance on them and get up

there.

And they’ll be walking out to their cars with a bag,

driving straight to two or three banks at a time making

night deposits, after work hour deposits. Which aided the

investigation significantly in the fact that it was simple

to identify where the banking institutions. Of course,

there some guys that missed that class and didn’t get the

message and all. But eventually, we found it out. We got

the word out that that’s one of their MOs.

This one in Atlanta is interesting. If you’re familiar

with Atlanta, I think it’s on the Buford Highway is what

they call it, just outside of Atlanta. Anybody from

Atlanta? Anyway, you can drive along Buford Highway and

it’s literally dozens of these Vietnamese agencies, money

remitters. Dozens and dozens and dozens of those things

which comes up prominently in one of the slides I’ll show

you in a minute.

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Essentially carrying on business as if ... I mean, the

amount of traffic in and out of these places is phenomenal.

And I think at one point, we were asked, and we hooked up

with the guys in financial operations at headquarters.

Because we were asked what percentage of these money

remitters were actually ... of the money that was coming

from the United States going to Vietnam was or could be

described as or identified as drug proceeds? And after

some hemming and hawing, we came up with a very, very rough

estimate. And this is for I think a eleven or thirteen

month period. I can’t remember which. For a select period

of time, we estimated that almost 40 percent of all

remittances going to Vietnam was drug related, drug purses.

And I’ll describe later on in meetings that we had with the

Vietnamese, the reason we weren’t seeing a whole lot of

cooperation is the fact that this was currency, hard

currency, they needed. And Vietnam has one of the fastest

growing economies in Asia if not at that time, it might

have been one of the fastest, more advanced than China’s at

the time. So it was difficult getting anything out of

them.

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This slide shows essentially what we confirmed through wire

intercepts of how money was actually transferred. And when

we had heard in one of the undercover conversations

initially in the Frying Pan investigation, one of the top

female targets in that ... and by the way, that was another

thing we found out. There were a lot of females that were

in leadership roles in this thing that surprised us. All

of them seemed to have the same first name of Mi. But it

was unusual I think for us to recognize the fact that

females actually had a large role in many of these

organizations.

In this particular scenario, we actually confronted us with

wire intercept conversation. These three money remitters

at the top and the first two left and center, were Candy

Box targets that essentially during Candy Box one was named

On Chow after the operations over just renamed itself.

There were all these properties. So none of these things

were seized. And just carry on this essentially the next

day.

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The fellow on the left, Jim Mach, was an object of

investigation on the Atlanta DA office. Did I think one of

the most outstanding jobs. That was a group that was

actually a fit team unit that just worked ... well, they

worked hard. Mach was already identified. His wife Mi Hun

who was residing in Canada. Agents there picked up both

sides of the conversation and actually laid this scenario

out.

What it would essentially do, Mach would take shopping bags

full of cash, walk into one of these three. These are the

three that he used the most often, money remitters.

Deposit the money there, go home. Make a phone call to his

wife in Canada saying, okay. I dropped the money off.

This is a little bit before 10:00. Call me when things are

right. A day, day and a half, two days later, she would

call back and say, okay. The money has been received. She

had received the money in Canada. And they would talk

about how much it was less the commission to do the

transfer.

What essentially we had, and this is what we attributed to

this Vietnamese underground baking system. And I think

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today we still don’t have a full realization of what it

actually constitutes. But I think the best thing we can

say is it’s something like a holowist[?] that the Middle

Easterners use. Some variation of that form.

But anyway, with the money going into Vietnam, again, I’ll

get to this point in a minute. That’s where the black hole

is. It went in there. It came back out somehow, some way.

There was one individual identified in Vietnam. But we

couldn’t do anything because the Vietnamese would do

anything with it. That was another story. But anyway, we

sort of closed the loop on exactly how in this particular

case with this organization how money was moved.

This individual, Po Doc Tran, was the primary money

remitter for Hip Win, the guy that I said was pretty much

the command and control individual in the United States.

This guy was his primary money transfer individual. He ran

a shop in Chicago identified early on. And we decided at

that point that this maybe an effort that we can employ

some of the high wire monies that headquarters manages that

we get some high wire money, wash it through, run it

through one of these ... through this individual’s business

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to Vietnam and see if we can’t get the Vietnamese ginned up

on this thing. Get them involved looking at the fact ...

not with the expectation that we were going to arrest

anybody in Vietnam. But at least give the Vietnamese maybe

a little evidence to play with, facts to deal with, that

they could open up their own investigations and maybe

eventually get this information back to them.

What they did through August and September ’05 is put two

transactions totaling $70,000, wire that through Tran’s

business to I think a corresponding bank in Hanoi and one

in Ho Chi Minh City that used to be Saigon. An undercover

agent from the Vietnamese Ministry of Economy I guess is

what they call it ... Finance. Was the undercover agent,

secured the money and then eventually turned it ... less

the 3.5 percent commission ... returned the money to our

agents in Hanoi.

The only problem was it’s crushing evidence on Tran. I

mean, he’s dead in the water with the way ... because he

was informed right at the get-go that these are drug

proceeds that we want sent back home. So he was under no

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uncertain terms, he knew that this was drug money that it

was drug money that he was wire transferring.

The problem was, and this was a sticky issue that we had

that we went round and round with the Vietnamese. There is

a law in Vietnam in their code that prohibits Vietnamese

law enforcement from cooperating ... as difficult as this

may sound ... from cooperating with outside agencies in a

drug investigation or any kind of criminal investigation.

So when we went back expecting can we get surveillance

photographs? Can we get reports from the undercover

agents? Can we get all matter of evidence that’s

collected, receipts, paperwork, names and identities and

information of individuals that were contacted?

Not a thing. We got nothing from them. Whether or not

that was really the way it was, we’ll probably never know.

But I know the guys, our two agents, Jeff Warner, was the

CA. I don’t know if he still is or not. But he worked his

tail off trying to get this thing done, but couldn’t get

them to cooperate.

29


The three methods of getting money back to Canada. Bulk

currency seemed to us the most popular way of doing it. AT

least we got a lot of seizures out of their effort. Again,

the remitter, travel agencies, a lot of times they were one

and the same thing. They were under the same roof. Of

course, the underground banking system that I alluded to

before.

Just some of the pictures that were sent in from various

offices in the course of the investigations, something that

we found unusual was the crystallized MDMA that actually

crossed the border I think in Blaine in a seizure that was

made subsequent to that a few days later in California.

The first and only instance we ever saw crystallized MDMA.

The 81s, I think that was a situation where undercover

agents in the Northeast, I think it was the Boston area,

were representing themselves as Hells Angels. And they

were into a ... I think it was a part Vietnamese/Laotian

group.

And essentially, they made an offer to the Vietnamese kids

we want you guys to produce a special pill. And 81s

meaning eight was the eighth letter in the alphabet, H.

30


The first letter in the alphabet A, Hells Angels. They

wanted 81s as their signature MDMA tablet for this

organization. They were successful eventually. But we did

hear reports back that some of the undercovers representing

themselves and looking like Hells Angels when they’re

dealing with these 5’6”, 125 pound soaking wet kids scared

the bejeebies out of them occasionally. And they were

somewhat reluctant to deal with them. I guess undercover

playing the role a little bit too much.

Gas tanks. We saw an incredible number of instances where

drugs and money were concealed in the gas tanks going north

and south. Alex noted this in the Candy Box presentation.

We saw it again in both Root Canal and Frying Pan. These

kids they liked Japanese produced cars. The Acura was I

think one of the most popular. Because it had easy access

to the fuel pump and the gas tank right behind the

backseat.

So these kids would drive fifty miles, pull into a gas

station, gas up again. Get back out on the highway. And

surveillance would notice 40, 50, 60 miles, they’d pull in

a gas station and gas up again. It didn’t take long to

31


figure out our gas tank’s loaded. These guys are loaded.

Quite often we arranged traffic stops in other states as

far as I know Jacksonville picked South Carolina all the

time because they had good cooperation with the troopers

there. They never miss. But gas tanks again were quite

popular.

Weapons again. We did see instances where in the latter

stages of Sweet Tooth of guns. And this sort of carried

onto the follow-up investigation Northern Exposure which

came after Sweet Tooth. Again, looking at the same common

denominators essentially. But we did see guns started

coming out of Texas, going up to Canada which obviously is

of great concern to the Canadian counterparts.

The tire concealment. Quite often money was going north,

particularly in the Gulf Coast region of Texas, going up to

a particular gas station, service station, in Buffalo, New

York. Where the vehicles would go in, garage door would go

down. An hour or two later, the car would come out and

start heading back south again. Cars with Canadian plates

would come in, go into the bay. The door would come down,

pack up. Take the money back. But unload the pills that

32


were coming in. So it was essentially a one stop shop

there in this particular gas station.

I think it was after the Candy Box takedown that

headquarters wanted to look seriously ... and the name of

the section escapes me at the moment. I can’t remember.

But what they essentially did is headquarters decided let’s

take a closer look at the results or the effect of this

operation Candy Box. So they went out and they interviewed

the agents and as many informants, cooperating defendants

and witnesses as they could in the cities of Jacksonville,

Houston ... New Orleans, Jacksonville, Houston and LA. And

tried to get a handle on exactly what was the impact of

this investigation?

And we wanted to take a look at it as well. And if you

look at the map of the United States and you look at the

upper northwest quadrant, there’s about a 530, 540 mile

section of the U.S./Canadian border that’s covered by what

they call the Pacific Ibit. It’s an interdiction team that

integrated border interdiction team I think staffed by U.S.

and Canadian officials.

33


So we wanted to look ... and again, this represents April,

June of ’04, the first three months after Candy Box ... at

what seizures looked at this particular section of the

U.S./Canada border. So we went by quarter and saw

obviously by the January/March timeframe, things were well

underway. Groups had reconstituted themselves essentially

worse than it ever was as far as coming across the

seizures, in other words coming across the border.

So I give this indication that they prove obviously that we

are (inaudible). As quickly as these groups reconstitute

themselves, they can do this with relative ease. Because

we saw this after Candy Box, after Root Canal, Frying Pan

or the Sweet Tooth Operation, they were back at it in

months. The only time that we actually saw pauses in any

of this activity was during the lunar new year. I think

that’s in the January/February timeframe. When these kids

in just massive numbers head back home to Vietnam,

Cambodia, China. And they’d be out of the picture for

awhile. But they’d come back full of vim and vigor and

ready to run again. Organizations would start. And again,

they had essentially their own organizations, the

familiarity with the individuals they have, the

34


associations that they had during the course of their

younger lives, it made it easy for them.

This is just another statistical grab that we put together,

incorporating a little bit more time. The

recommendations ... and this sort of struck at the question

what do we do now? We found that we couldn’t make any

headway with the Vietnamese. The Chinese were hit and

miss. Laotians, forget about it. Anything that we tried

to go outside the U.S. with the exception of our Canadian

counterparts. We were both swimming in the same water. I

mean, we both were coming up short on anything outside to

enhance investigations, enhance prosecutions, further

identify these units, these organizations.

We knew at this point we had to go beyond the scope of just

another round of investigations, another round of another

Sweet Tooth, another Root Canal, another Candy Box. At

that point, SOD or myself, Jay, we hooked up members of the

financial ... Tommy Ma who’s staff coordinator up in

financial operations. We went and got whole issues that we

wanted to look at with the Hanoi country office, Jeff

Warner. And we sat down and essentially put together a

35


game plan of all right. This is what we need to do. These

are the next steps that we have to at least take a

proactive effort in this thing. Because none of us really

felt like doing another series of operations like this.

When we know we’re going to be limited in the scope of

where we can expand.

The other memorandum of understanding that the DEA and the

Ministry of Public Security. We actually had pushed this

thing for a number of years. President Bush actually went

to Vietnam. And I can’t remember the timeframe. But it

was for another conference, another series of meetings

where it actually signed this thing. So it was at least

officially recognized that there would be some level of

cooperation in writing to the degree whether they were

actually going to comply with us with the tenants of the

MOU left a lot for interpretation. I’ll put it that way.

We had some money laundering legislation. We had told

these guys repeatedly, and Jeff Warner was sort of the

(inaudible) in this thing. If you don’t do something about

this Vietnam turning in the narco state. Because of the

fact that we had identified so much money, drug proceeds

36


coming into the country, a lack of will, a lack of

legislation, to deal with it effectively, we tried to get

them to understand that you’re heading the same way as some

of these South American countries are back in the day.

Coupled with that, we wanted with the MOU, the law

enforcement cooperation. And if it’s not only just with

the U.S. The concerns we had with the Canadian commons.

Australia has a heck of a problem with MDMA coming into

their country from this area and Vietnamese involvement.

Along the Pacific Rim. Again, several of these locations

effected by lack of effective law enforcement. The asset

sharing. We’ve dangled that aspect in front of them.

Listen, if we can identify proceeds in your country, we can

seize this money. We can share the amounts with you

proportionately.

This 981. This was somewhat (inaudible). We actually had

to debrief, not debrief. We actually had to give a

presentation to the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam. This is

something that we had actually planned on doing with the

Ambassador to China and we did with the U.S. Ambassador to

Canada. Sit down with Ambassador Mike Maureen. No

37


kidding. This guy’s name was Mike Maureen. He was an ex-

Marine, fought in the Vietnam War. A very sympathetic ear.

Plus the fact that he was retiring a few months. So he was

willing to do what needed to be done.

This is what we call sort of the nuclear option on this

one. This was something that we discussed with him,

members of his staff, State Department, ethanol attorneys

which we had Lewis at the time. Describing essentially and

putting it in very, very simple terms. If we identified

proceeds in Vietnam, drug proceeds, that if we can’t get

them through legitimate exchanges of (inaudible) or

whatever that if that particular institution has a

corresponding account in the United States, if that amount

of money that we’ve identified in that account can be

seized in the United States. And that account essentially

being frozen.

When we were explaining this to Ambassador Maureen was all

for this idea. How many time has this been? Years. And

our ethanols attorney Linda Samuels said it’s been done

fifteen times and it’s remarkable how quickly the country

comes to the table when they know that international trade

38


is going to be effected by the closing of an account. They

need that account open to affect trade.

So that was something that we put in our back pocket. The

only problems is on the reverse side of that, it’s going to

absolutely crush ... if we actually employed that thing, it

was going to crush the working relationship at that point

with our DEA office and Hanoi and our counterparts.

Because it actually was such a high profile issue. And

again, that’s a tenant in the Patriot Act.

We did make a trip to Vietnam. Unfortunately, our Canadian

counterparts weren’t able to make it, scheduling

difficulties and it couldn’t. And our window was very

short. Because I was getting ready to retire. And I

wanted to get in there and do this before we did. We did

meet with the Vietnamese. And I found it interesting.

Because in attending these meetings, I’ve worked as an

attaché in Vienna and we have a lot of experience in

working with former communist governments. Because we had

essentially eleven countries in the former East bloc that

we covered.

39


And I was interested to see how they would approach this

and who would they bring to these meetings and how the

information flow would take place. And we sat across the

delegation of Vietnamese, the Minister of Public Security,

the Economic Police, their version of the State Department.

They actually had a Minister there. And exchanged

information, gave the song and dance and essentially a

litany of issues that we had come across in these

investigations that we wanted direct action being done. In

light of the fact that MOU had been signed.

And pretty much par for the course in that information will

be channeled to the opt and filtered its way down instead

of what we do and our interaction with our own agencies.

We’d sit down and we’d meet with our counterparts across

the table who essentially do the same thing we do. We all

had the same interests. This was another one of those

instances where ... and this is again a communist

government. But the information will be filtered from the

top down. So by the time it gets down to the working

stiff, the working guy that you’re interacting with or

trying to interact with, he knows about maybe an eighth of

40


the information that he needs. So we’re not too successful

in that aspect.

The use of a regional legal adviser. We’ve asked the State

Department if there was possibly one of their RLAs and its

regional legal adviser, actually the State Department ...

I’m sorry, a DOJ attorney who essentially provides advice

to struggling governments, new emerging democracies,

certainly very successful in the former East bloc

countries, Rumania, of course. But in this case, we

couldn’t get the cooperation from the State Department on

this one. It was just too sensitive of an issue. The

foundation essentially hadn’t been laid for us to do that.

So I retired and the rest is history. But anyway, I think

we made progress to a certain degree. But there were a lot

of, you know, we felt like we came up short and had a

tendency to beat ourselves up a little bit. Because of the

fact that, you know, if we’d have done this, maybe this

would have happened. If we’d have done this, we’d have

gotten these people involved. So hindsight is always

20/20. But that pretty much wraps up the U.S. portion of

Sweet Tooth. I guess we’re going to do questions after

41


Sandra’s presentation. But again, just by way of

introduction, in thirty-two years of law enforcement, I

never found a more agreeable, easy to work with counterpart

than Sandra Basso with RCMP. And I’ve worked overseas for

ten and a half years. And I never came across anybody ...

other than the fact that I understand what she was saying

all the time because she spoke English. But it’s been a

pleasure to work with her. She was just the best.

(inaudible) money later. Please welcome Sandra. [applause]

MS. SANDRA BASSO: Good morning. I know you all have a burning

question actually before we even get started. I always get

this question as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police. No, I

don’t ride a horse to work. I actually ride a police car.

So let’s get that out of your head right now. For us,

Project O’Skillet was a project of Operation Frying Pan and

Root Canal. Root Canal was again on the East Coast station

in Atlanta. And Frying Pan was on the West Coast.

Actually, they had started off actually in Chicago.

I’m going to tell the story of how we brought it together

as one project for the RCMP. And it’s a story actually

that is actually of cooperation, communication and success.

42


Its investigation highlights how real-time sharing of

information between both agencies, investigators and

analysts can make the difference between actually just

doing a couple of local arrests and actually doing an

international takedown.

I will speak on some of the undercover operations we

conducted in Canada and some of the legal requirements. I

will also speak in very layman terms on the extradition

process and how it relates to or how it related to the

Canadian subjects that were actually arrested and finally

extradited to the United States to face criminal charges.

In March, 2004, the Drug Enforcement Administration had

actively been investigating a marijuana and MDMA and money

laundering organization operating between the United

States, Canada and Vietnam. In August of 2004, the RCMP

entered a cooperative investigation, identifying several

Canadians in the distribution of Canadian marijuana and

MDMA.

One of the main targets that originated was Hip Van Win.

An interesting aspect actually on both of these

43


investigations, meaning Root Canal and Frying Pan, the main

targets on both of those investigations were actually

Canadians that had decided to actually move to the U.S. to

operate their own distribution network which was really a

controlling factor. Because generally a lot of the

Canadian’s targets stay out of the U.S. thinking that by

staying out of the actual country, they can actually avoid

being charged in U.S. charges. So it’s interesting that

these two fellows actually decided to move down there.

Hip Van Win, when he left Canada, it appeared that he had

actually started to setup shop in Chicago. And originally,

we were dealing with the DEA in the Chicago area. And they

were getting prepared to go up on a Title III. And then

all of a sudden, he ended up moving to the Los Angeles

area. He had an extensive Canadian criminal record, but

did not have any drug related offenses. Hip Van Win, as

far as we could figure out actually ... and those are

mainly from the intercepts from the Los Angeles areas, that

he had three main Canadian sources of supply. One female

in the Vancouver area, Kuk, and then two males in the

greater Toronto area. Both of which were identified at a

later date.

44


In May of 2005, the Chicago office was orchestrating MDMA

exchange in the Chicago area. By the way, Hip Van Win used

Canadian source of supply Nan Viet Nuin to provide 10,000

MDMA tablets. When the Chicago deal happened actually, Nan

was not identified. He was solely referred to as Tom on

the line. We thought perhaps through that UC operation in

Chicago that he may actually be identified. But the only

person that was identified was the actual courier that

delivered the 10,000 MDMA tablets. And then in return, he

brought up the $35,000 U.S. that was for payment. So he

was the only one that was identified during that.

Nan Viet Nuin. Nan Viet Nuin was Tom, was the gentleman

that Hip Van Win was using as one of his Canadian sources

of supply. Nan was not known to police. He did not have

any Canadian record. Again, came from Vietnam in 1985,

lived in Toronto, Ontario with his wife. His wife actually

operated Polly’s Nails which you saw a photograph in Tom’s

presentation there. Historically, Asian organized crime

groups have used nail salons or hair salons operated by the

Vietnamese community as a money laundering. The RCMP was

not on a Title III wiretap investigation on Nan. So we

45


actually could not confirm that. Although, we had taken

him and heard on surveillance many times to Polly’s Nail’s,

we could never actually come out and say that it was

involved.

The courier that was identified was Chester Norman

Armstrong. Chester Norman Armstrong is a First Nation’s

person. And historically, the First Nation people have

been tied to the Vietnamese. And we think that originally

a lot of those relationships were formed in the tobacco

days when they were transporting tobacco between Canada and

the U.S. It appears now in an investigation that we just

took down in the summertime that as well in Canada a lot of

the First Nations people operate, unofficial we’ll say,

cigarette stands on the native reserves. And there has

been an indication that the Vietnamese will actually travel

to those reserves and start buying these cigarettes, low

cost cigarettes and then start actually forging their

relationships and using them actually to transport the

product across the border.

The other theory as to why the Vietnamese are using them is

First Nations people, of course, have a lot easier time

46


crossing the border. A lot of them will have dual

residency. They’ll have an address in the United States

and have an address in Canada as well. So their frequency

for traveling is actually much more an d a lot more

convenient than some other couriers that are used.

The MDMA purchase ... during that Chicago deal actually or

after that Chicago deal, Hip Van Win, who was still on a

wiretap investigation or Title III in the Los Angeles area,

kept up his conversations or negotiations with the

gentleman or the Canadian source of supply known as Tom.

We knew that at that point in August, there was pressure on

in terms of identifying these people. And we knew that

we’d have to bring this file to an end prior to ... or

having to identify them priorily.

So it was decided that the best way to identify some of the

Canadian sources of supply was to actually conduct an

undercover operation. And the undercover operation we did

with Nan ... sorry, with Hip Van Win was to draw out ... we

decided to sort of do the plan that there was a gentleman

in the Toronto area that needed to purchase 20,000 MDMA

tablets. So negotiations started with the cooperating

47


defendant and Hip Van Win. And that cooperating defendant

was given the phone number or the name for Tom to start

setting up these deals.

At the time that we started to set them up, we actually

didn’t know who would be drawn out of the woodwork.

Because we didn’t know how many other Canadian sources of

supply that Hip actually had. It was only by fluke that,

of course, when the cooperating defendant was contacted by

the Canadian source of supply, it actually turned out to be

Tom. And Tom at that time was then identified as Nan Viet

Nuin.

During that operation, we actually used a DEA undercover

operator. Because he was Vietnamese. And he was also

playing the role that he was an American, but was traveling

into the Canadian area to get Canadian MDMA. The RCMP

supplied the finances for that purchase. It was

(inaudible) and supplied for a price of $2.50 per tablet.

The pills that were seized were blue in color, two types of

blue and the dove symbol. The deals started on one day and

actually came to fruition on the next. With Nan actually

supplying directly. There was no other courier involved

48


directly the DEAUC. And that’s just a close up of the

doves there.

Because of that successful deal, negotiations or

conversations continued with Hip Van Nuin, the cooperating

defendant in California and with Tom or Nan now. The

undercover operation in Canada, even though it is an

undercover agent or DEA agent, we actually have to get

paper to actually start intercepting their phones. So it’s

like a mini wiretap. We call it a one party consent. That

one party consent is in place on the UC’s phone, on the

undercover operator’s phone. So any conversations that he

had in Canada with Tom, with Nan Viet Nuin were actually

recorded. Those recordings were actually then sent down to

the prosecuting office. And they were used as evidence for

the U.S. charges.

We attempted a second purchase actually from Tom to see if

we can draw out any other Canadian sources of supply. And

unfortunately, Tom met with the DEAUC. And then apparently

must have picked out surveillance, got spooked and never

returned. He did pick up the packaging, but never brought

it to the UC. But after that, that in itself was not a bad

49


thing actually. Because that spurred on a whole bunch of

conversation between Hip in California, Tom, the Canadian

source of supply, and, of course, the cooperating

defendant. Because Tom was actually blaming the

cooperating defendant, saying there was something wrong

with him. So that evidence was used in the prosecution as

well.

The Title IIIs continued on Hip Van Win after this. And

even in the beginning, we knew that there was a Canadian

source of supply that went by the name of Tony. And there

was a multitude of Tony’s. So we ended up calling him Tony

number one. Tony number one had actually traveled to

California to meet with Hip or the person that we thought

was Tony number one. So in late August, he was actually

identified meeting with Hip. The unfortunate thing is that

we needed to actually confirm his role in the organization,

and that being the Canadian source of supply, to actually

make him prosecutional. Because other than that, there was

just somebody needing Hip, who turned out to be Canadian.

Again, we decided to do another undercover operation.

Again, not knowing who Hip would provide the cooperating

50


defendant with. Again, we were just lucky that at that

time Hip provided Tony number one. And Tony was then

confirmed to be Tuwan Nox Sam. And that was again another

purchase of MDMA pills for $2.50 a pill for 25,000.

Twan Nox Sam, again, is from Vietnam. He became a Canadian

citizen in 1986, sponsored his wife. He again had no prior

Canadian record and was not known to police. After he was

identified, it was determined that Sam was actually

spending a fair rate of time in Canadian casinos. And

historically, casinos have been used for a multitude of

reasons, some of them being to launder the proceeds. Some

of them actually started off their business by loan

sharking. And the other one is to actually just hold

meetings because it’s a public place.

In terms of Sam’s case, it was actually just to hold

meetings. There’s a lot of background noise. Nobody’s

really paying attention to you. And actually because they

hang out in the Pagout tables, which are Asian derived

games, they actually don’t stand out. So they can blend in

quite easily. The good thing about using casinos is

actually there’s thousands and thousands of cameras. And

51


we actually have access to all of those. So it actually

works out very well for us if they do decide to do that.

These are the purchase from Sam. Again, it was a DAUC.

And actually, it was the same UC that came up and

orchestrated the deal with Sam. Again, it was the RMCP

provided the $25,000 for the purchase of the 10,000 pills.

These ones were with the Nike symbol. It should be

interesting that the analysis of these pills as well

confirm not only them to the MDMA and to, of course, have a

filler of caffeine. But both of these purchases also had a

high level of meth in them. And we’re thinking now that

the reason for the meth is actually the repeat customers.

People get addicted a lot faster. And therefore, they’ll

come back to purchase them all the time.

At the same time that the Frying Pan, Los Angeles I’ll say,

investigation was going on, Atlanta was doing its own

investigation. And they had identified the Canadian who

had moved down to the Atlanta area to setup his own MDMA

distribution network. This individual used family members,

relatives and others actually, to organize and transport

large quantities of MDMA tablets from the Toronto area to

52


the Atlanta area. And this individual was known as Kim

Twan Mac. Kim Twan Mac has since died in jail. He

actually had cancer upon his arrest. But he ended up

having a heart attack in jail.

He as well had no prior Canadian criminal record and was

not known to police either. When he lived up here, we

think that the last ... he started spending a fair rate of

time in the United States traveling back and forth in the

early 2005. Atlanta DEA actually started intercepting him

in August of 2005. And then he jumped onboard. The big

difference between the Root Canal side, which was the

Atlanta East Coast side, and the Frying Pan side is that we

did not do any purchases or any buy walks on the Atlanta

targets. Mainly because they were actually all identified

through the intercepts, Special Agent Ken McCloud

intercepts, wiretap, investigation on Kim, it was much

easier to identify who he was talking to in the Canadian

area. And some of those reasons are going to become very

bold as to why.

One of the individuals that he used was his son Thomas.

Thomas is an interesting character. Because he had been

53


convicted of attempted murder on a police officer in Canada

in 1992. Unfortunately, he entered a plea of guilty right

away, plea bargaining and was sentenced to only twelve

years. And in Canada, of course, you rarely serve your

full sentence. So he was released in I think October,

2001. After that ... or he probably began his real estate

license as he was in jail. And so when he came out, he

actually served his father very well and started using that

license to locate residential, commercial property suited

for his father’s indoor growth. Keep it all in the family.

He also then started aiding n the organization of the MDMA

tablets going down to the U.S. He actually did not fight

his extradition too hard. Because he knew that he was

going down. It sounded like he actually had a fear of his

father as well. He did not cooperate upon arrest at all.

Actually, none of the Root Canal subjects cooperated upon

arrest.

The other individual that Kim has used was his second wife,

Mi Ka Huin. And these are some before and after pictures.

This was the color pictures on the summertime there were

pictures taken of her on surveillance in the Toronto area.

54


So she fought extradition very hard. So she was not

extradited until over two years after arrest. She spent

two years in Canadian jail awaiting her extradition. And

in terms of actual U.S. prosecution, that is dead time.

That does not count towards their sentence at all. And

that’s how she looked on the day that she was extradited.

So a complete ... she started off I think helping Kim with

her scene in marijuana. It appears that that’s where he

started, in the marijuana growth. And that’s what she was

doing. But as Ken McCloud went up on the intercepts on Kim

Mach, they realized that she was actually involved in the

day-to-day operations of the MDMA distribution. And the

packaging, the secreting of the MDMA was at times done at

their residence. And then, of course, organizing the

couriers.

And then she was also involved in the proceeds. Tom

touched a bit on the proceeds coming back into Canada. In

terms of that organization, the only time that we actually

witnessed or the handling of proceeds ... what we guessed

to be the proceeds. Because, again, we were not on wiretap

investigation in Canada. So we weren’t privy to all their

55


conversations. But she and the close associates that Kim

Mach used, another Canadian, entered into a jewelry store

in a completely Asian mall. And instead of going to the

counter, they actually went behind the store and came out

with a little baggy. And we had guessed that that would

probably have been used in the laundering of their

proceeds.

The third person in that Root Canal that was extradited was

Trun Sun Tran. And Trun Sun Tran was a close associate of

Kim Mach. He, on a daily basis during surveillance, was

observed actually traveling with Kim’s wife. He was an old

time, you know, criminal activity. Although, he again did

not have any drug related charges. But he did organize his

own criminal group as well. It seemed that he actually had

wanted to sort of depart from Kim Mach’s organization and

setup his own. The interesting thing about him, and it was

backdoor information. I can’t prove or disprove it. But

while he was incarcerated, it appeared that he was setting

up his own network while he was still incarcerated in

Canada while waiting to be extradited.

56


Antonio Travaris is the last Canadian that has been

extradited. He was, as a result of lines on Hip Van Win in

the Los Angeles area, they decided to take down Antonio.

And Antonio was in his own vehicle. But when he was

stopped, he had $150,000 U.S. currency on the front seat of

his vehicle in an envelope. Antonio is a truck driver.

And it is assumed that that’s what he was original used for

was transporting product across the border. And that’s

perhaps what he was doing with that money as well is maybe

that he had rented a vehicle and was going to drop it off

into his trailer before crossing the border. But again, he

had no prior criminal Canadian record and was not known to

police.

The result is that the two major drug transportation rings

were dismantled with ties in Canada, Vietnam and sixty-one

U.S. distribution groups. Over 300 individuals were

arrested. Fifty-eight search warrants were executed, both

in Canada and the United States. We had only a mark down

over just close to a million tablets and just over 600

kilos of marijuana seized. All the Canadians were

extradited into the United States for prosecution. All of

them have entered a guilty plea and are awaiting

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sentencing. And a side note on one of them. Actually,

Sam, one of the Canadian sources of supply, is he has

already applied in a prisoner exchange to come back up to

Canada. So it happens a lot faster than we have.

But I just want to touch a little bit on the extradition

process and why we went to extradition on this file. The

extradition act is generally governed more so in politics

than it is actually in the Department of Justice. It’s the

Minister that signs off on someone surrendering to be

prosecuted into the United States. There is a lot of

criteria that needs to be considered in terms of

extradition. But in layman terms, in investigators terms,

you look at where the bulk of the evidence lies. And would

there have been successful prosecution in Canada should all

the American information be taken away? And in this case,

the answer always came up that the bulk of the evidence

lied in the United States. And that would be the highest

percentage of successful prosecution.

When you decide to go to extradition, it cannot be a last

minute thing. It actually has to be planned with the

Department of Justice, the AUSA and the investigators

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involved. Because it takes a lot of preplanning. The U.S.

investigators must submit through the AUSA, that finally

gets up to the Canadian Department of Justice, a package

that establishes the records of the case, how the identity

of this individual was known and why you believe this

individual to be in the Canada area.

That package, how it is presented, will determine whether

it will be provisional arrest warrants or whether it will

be straight arrest warrants. If it’s provisional arrest

warrants, it means that you have just proven necessity. It

means that this person must be arrested now because of.

And in this case in terms of the Operation Sweet Tooth,

O’Skillet, they were all arrested in the provisional arrest

warrants. Because we proved a lot of things. One of them

being that it was an international takedown that should the

Canadians find out that the Americans were arrested that

there was a risk of flight. And risk of flight includes

not just the ability to travel, but the resources to get

false documentation and the motivation actually to travel.

So once the American package comes up and it actually is

sanctioned that we will be going extradition, then the

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Canadian investigators has to do up their own extradition

package for each individual as well. So in this case, I

think I did up nine affidavits presenting risk of flight

identity on why I believe this person to be the same person

that the Americans want and why I believe this person could

be here in Canada. So it’s a fairly extensive process. It

only happens after both Departments of Justices actually

agree that this is the best option. It again cannot happen

overnight.

The extradition process itself, once the target gets

arrested, he has the ability to surrender himself in the

sense that he will not fight the extradition process. In

that case, I’ve seen someone be extradited to the United

States as fast as three months. And I say fast because the

longest I’ve seen is actually five years. The old

extradition process was the five year one. That took a lot

more time. The new one actually is generally between a

year to two years. And that’s with a few appeals as well.

The main thing with extradition is proof of identity. That

the person that you have on the lines is the person that

you have here in Canada. And sometimes that can get fairly

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tricky unless you have the undercover operations that we

had, that was an easy proof for us. And that successful

prosecution would be best served in the other country. In

this case, it was the United States.

So all these people now have been extradited. The last one

went, I’m going to say was Mi Nach Hun. She went late last

year or early this year actually. So she sat in a Canadian

prison for a very long time. And that value’s nothing.

And that’s it. I think I’ve gone through it all.

[applause]

MS: We have some time for questions. All I would ask is if

anyone has a question if you would wait for Ms. Shanida

with her microphone. Katie, if you wouldn’t mind loaning

yours so that he has a microphone. That way we can get the

question and the answer both for the transcript. Questions

please for either of our speakers. Don’t everybody jump up

at once. Far too much to take in in one session.

MS: I also have an advisory site (inaudible)

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MS: Always a good thing. No one has any questions. Both

Constable Basso and Special Agent Slavinkay will be here

following the conclusion of our program if you’d like to

come up and say a few words. I would like to ask and

thank, as a matter of fact, Katie Drew, our educator here

on the staff for putting this session together. And she

has both for Special Agent Slavinkay and Constable Basso a

small token of appreciation from the museum staff. I want

to publicly thank Pam Lambo from the Embassy of Canada for

her efforts in putting this program together. Pam, thank

you very, very much.

And, of course, we want to thank the Royal Canadian Mounted

Police for their support in sending down our wonderful

guest speakers, both for this session and for the one last

month. We are grateful for the continuing cooperative

effort between DEA and RCMP. And we look forward to that

relationship continuing in the future. I should mention

that I hope you don’t regret anything you said today.

Because you will be able to access a transcript of this

session as well as all of the museum’s monthly lecture

series. They’ll be available probably in a couple of weeks

on our museum website.

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And a shameless plug. If you haven’t visited the museum in

awhile, please do so. There’s some great exhibits and a

gift shop with the holidays coming up, I’m sure there’s

plenty of opportunities for you there for stocking

stuffers. Thank you all very much for coming Constable

Basso, thank you. Special Agent Slavinkay, thank you. You

all have a good day. [applause]

(END OF TRANSCRIPT)

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